Want to go to Sweetpea Heaven? Plant now!
I can’t believe it’s time to plant sweetpeas!!!
These next couple months are the very best time to put in seeds and starts, since we still have such nice, warm weather. The plants are able to get established quickly and produce a vigorous root system, which will continue growing in the cool winter months. An established root system, come spring, will give you substantially more growth and flowers than if you had planted them in spring.
'April in Paris'
Oh, to write a proper ode to these frilly, girly, intoxicatingly fragrant flowers…..
Spencer English is by far my favorite kind. The flowers are sizable, with nice long stems for cutting, and come in so many colors and combinations- dark jewel tones, pastels, bicolor, picotee, stippled. All are amazing to smell; nothing smells quite like it!
Heirloom styles, the most scented of all, bring back a lot of my first garden memories. Small, plentiful flowers rambling or climbing through my great-grandmother’s terraced garden, making their way through the cement goldfish pond, down and beyond. We’d pick kid-sized bouquets (that quickly became forgotten in our back pockets).
Hand-picked that day
Every year in the fall I get the seedlings going, sometimes from seed; other years I just put in the starts, since I’m often too busy this time of year to pay much mind to getting the seeds started. Either way is great, just make sure you put out some kind of snail protection (snailbait, copper tape, etc.). Snails exceptionally love to eat the tender new growth.
We have a nice selection of young plants right now. You can choose some mixed six-packs in full height or knee-high varieties. The individual 4″ potted starts that we grow exclusively are especially wonderful for achieving specific color schemes. Click on this link to learn more about how to grow them: http://kingsflowernursery.com/2010/01/31/sweet-peas/, and you can always come in or give us a call if you have any questions.
Our front fence last spring
